


the cinematographic heart of blair waldorf

by ivermectin



Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: Abusive Chuck Bass, Canon Divergence, Character Study, Dan/Blair endgame, Everyone Falls in Love With Serena van der Woodsen, Experimental Style, F/F, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Blair Waldorf, Past Relationship(s), it's the formatting. you'll get it when you see it., past Blair/Chuck, past Dan/Serena, past Nate/Blair, standard gossip girl warnings, this takes place somewhere during the end of s4 and beginning of s5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27063346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivermectin/pseuds/ivermectin
Summary: Later on, Blair will write (uncharitably) in her journal:Serena Celia van der Woodsen: running away.Daniel Randolph Humphrey: running towards.
Relationships: Dan Humphrey/Blair Waldorf, Serena van der Woodsen/Blair Waldorf
Comments: 3
Kudos: 45





	the cinematographic heart of blair waldorf

**Author's Note:**

> if bits of this seem weird/ different from how i usually write *shrug emoji*  
> i wanted to see how well i could handle blair pov! hence.

_“What, so now you want Dan?” Serena asks, eyes cold. “He’s mine, you can’t have him.”_

_“Serena, we’re not children anymore,” Blair says gently, and isn’t it strange? The role reversal of it, Serena with her eyes steely like diamonds, Blair with the soft pleading tone to her mouth?_

They meet at the loft to watch movies together, and Dan asks her if she wants popcorn. She considers making a statement to put him in his place, but the way he’s looking at her is soft and gentle, like he really cares, and she can’t remember the last time somebody looked at her like that before (if ever.)

“Do your worst, Humphrey,” she says, and she almost gives him half a smile. _  
_

_“You have always wanted the things that I have,” Serena tells her later. “Leave Dan out of it.”_

_“This isn’t about you!” Blair can’t believe what she’s hearing, mostly because it feels like a card game gone wrong, a whole world inverted through a joke mirror. “Have you stopped to think about that?”_

Because, well, Dan may not have much money, but he definitely has a heart. Chuck is a billionaire, but he doesn’t have a heart, no, not really. This is something Blair tries to ignore, mostly because being Chuck&Blair is easy, is something she can do without any effort.

But then Chuck is trying to force himself on her, and he puts his fist through the glass, and she’s screaming at him to stop, her body trapped in a bracket by his, and it’s painful, how her first thought is “Dan would never do this to me.”

Blair doesn’t like to be wrong about things, especially when it comes to the men she loves. Blair isn’t like Serena, falling in love with a new man every day, and Blair isn’t like Nate, with the sort of affairs that’d make a television show’s ratings only go up.

Blair wants things to be traditional. She wants a husband who can give her stability.

She wipes the blood off her cheek.

_The sort of love Serena and Dan shared was gentle and warm, uncomplicated and honest, and strangely innocent. Blair remembers the bitter resentment from all of it, from how Serena was now suddenly level headed and calm, grounded and held into place by Dan, how Dan looked at her and saw a whole person, not just Party Girl Serena van der Woodsen, and that used to infuriate her, because there was a whole chasm of Serena that Dan didn’t know. Dan hadn’t ever had to wipe the vomit out of her dress, or do her make-up for her when her hands shook too much. Dan saw the bits of Serena that sparkled in the light. Blair saw the bits of Serena that were broken glass._

Blair isn’t perfect, but she wants to be. Some days, she isn’t sure for whom. It’s like she’s performing in a show, but she doesn’t know who her audience is.

If there is even anybody watching.

And she wants someone to be watching, and she wants it to be Dan. Dan Humphrey, with that little smile he gets on the corner of his mouth; a smile he saves just for her.

_And the crux of it is that, before Dan wanted Serena or Serena wanted Dan or Dan wanted Blair or Serena wanted Dan to not want Blair, before all of that; Blair wanted Serena._

_Serena was so effortlessly everything Blair could never be; beautiful, effusive, a real delight, a light source, radiant, warm, sunflower golden._

_Blair wanted Serena, and Blair wanted to be Serena. Blair wanted someone to love her the way Nate loved Serena – Nate, who’d had her before the Sheppard wedding, both of them laughing and giddy and in public, in the bar, Serena with light streaming in around her, Serena the night before she’d leave them all without a word._

_Serena had an allure that came from her magnetism. Blair didn’t have any of that, any of Serena’s light. Blair was a black hole._

“So,” she says, and it’s embarrassing, the amount of gin she’s needed for this (if she could talk to Serena about this, she knows she’d get an unflattering comparison to CeCe, that’s how much gin she’s had.) “Are you still in love with Serena?”

Dan’s hand, that’s stroking Blair’s hair idly, goes still. “No,” he says, and she believes him.

Then, he asks, his voice cautiously even, “Are _you_ still in love with Serena?”

Blair exhales, feels like her lungs are smaller than ever. “Dan, I don’t want to be.”

_Nate was stability in a way Chuck wasn’t, though he and Blair were always incompatible. This was a truth Blair never looked at; after all, she was Blair Waldorf. She didn’t need to be loveable, she just needed to be powerful, and Nate Archibald could let her be that._

_It’s only in retrospect that she can admit that Nate was always looking at Serena, even when her make-up was ruined or her clothes were out of fashion. Serena didn’t even have to try, she had Nate wrapped around her thumb if she wanted him. She’d have to flick her wrist, and he’d go spinning straight into her._

_Blair knew, and she didn’t mind. After all, she was orbiting Serena too. It was a rule of the universe, in their circle. You had to give Serena van der Woodsen your heart, and you had to let her break it. That was the way in._

_And then there was Dan Humphrey. The only person who’d ever been able to break SVDW’s heart, though he swore with a level of sincerity that couldn’t be faked that he’d never meant to._

“So, you and Serena were in love once,” Blair says later, softly. “Why’d you break up with her?”

“I love Serena,” Dan says, equally softly. “I’m not in love with her anymore, but I would hope to always be her friend. But I had to break up with her, Blair. We would never have worked.”

“Oh, and why is that?” Blair asks.

Dan takes a generous gulp of gin, frowns like he needs something stronger. “Sometimes, people just aren’t compatible,” he says. “Serena and I have different outlooks when it comes to the world; different perspectives. We deal with conflict differently, as well.”

“Serena always runs away from her problems,” Blair says, bitter, and she doesn’t need to look at Dan to know that he’s frowning.

“And I walk into problems with my head held high, often only to cause more problems,” Dan says. “I’m sure you know what that’s like.”

Blair looks at him, really looks at him. Considers telling him the truth, which is, “You make me want to be a better person, Dan Humphrey.” Instead, she just punches his shoulder gently.

“Do you think Vanessa had a crush on Serena at any point?” she asks.

Dan’s face goes sour. “I don’t think about Vanessa,” he says.

_Blair had kissed Serena once. They were both fifteen, and she couldn’t help it, Serena was just there, wearing pastel blue and silver, like a vision from a dream, and Blair had held her ever so gently, kissed her full on the mouth._

_Serena had laughed, pulling away. “Oh, B,” she’d said, light-hearted in a way that Blair could not even fathom. “I’m flattered, but you’re like a sister to me.”_

_Later on, Blair had wondered if Serena was just afraid; afraid of being loved by someone who actually knew her, who saw all the bits of her that weren’t beautiful, but stayed, anyway._

_And then came Dan Humphrey._

Now, Blair wonders who will love all of her, even the terrible, horrid, ugly parts of her. Chuck understood the ugly, because he had parts of him like that, too. Sometimes it takes a series of incidents (it started with a rejection at Yale, and then the dominos just tumbled on and on, and Blair doesn’t talk about it, but she’s starting to learn that it’s possible the name Blair Waldorf doesn’t actually mean what she wants it to mean, and there are worlds she isn’t a part of.)

Dan isn’t Serena. His pep talks don’t go “You’re _Blair Waldorf,_ you can do it.”

He just looks at her like he knows her, and says, “What do you need from me?”

Blair is used to asking people for big things, monumental things, making them move heaven and earth just to prove their devotion to her. She’s ruined Little Jenny’s life enough with demands that were too big to be reasonable, but she likes to think that she’s grown up.

Dan looks like he’d give her the world if she asked, which is why she doesn’t ask for the world.

“I don’t know,” Blair admits, and those three words are the hardest ones to say, especially to him. “I really have no idea. But while you’re here, do you think you could stay?”

_Later on, Blair will write (uncharitably) in her journal:_

_Serena Celia van der Woodsen: running away._

_Daniel Randolph Humphrey: running towards._

_Running to, running from. It’s all the same thing, just different directions. And then there’s Blair, in the middle of the field._

Blair Waldorf: watching and watching and watching.

**Author's Note:**

> i have many feelings.  
> anyway. hope that was a worthwhile read?


End file.
